Wounded Bears fan: Scuffle started after nice words were said about Packers

A Bears fan attacked outside Soldier Field says police have it all wrong: He and his buddy weren't attacked by Cowboys fans, they were stabbed by fellow Bears fans for saying something nice about the Packers.

"We were just idiots," said the 21-year-old man from Oak Lawn, still nursing a cut to his shoulder from Thursday night's post-game scuffle.

His friend fared worse, suffering eight or nine cuts to the back. "It was probably a knife because the cuts were so clean," said the man, who did not want to be identified.

Both were treated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and released.

The man said he and his friend were in the parking lot in the 400 block of East 18th Street around 10:45 p.m., rehashing the Bears loss, when they started talking about the Green Bay Packers. "I was saying the Packers are awesome this year, why can’t I be born a Packers fan?"

The comment caught the attention of another man in the lot who stormed up. “I went to go shake hands but as soon as I did, his buddy came up and threw beer at my head,’’ the man said. “Beer got in my eyes and blinded me.

"Then everything went downhill," the man said. "I was trying to defend myself and run away. I was running away, I remember."

E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune

Soldier Field with Burnham Harbor in the foreground.

Soldier Field with Burnham Harbor in the foreground. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune)

The man believes he was cut as he stumbled around, trying to see.

Three friends of the man who got angry "shanked" his friend eight or nine times in the back, he said. "I guess they piled on him and I just ran around in circles ... I couldn't see. Three of his buddies attacked my one buddy."

Several witnesses helped piece together what happened after the two friends were placed in an ambulance, but the man disputed the police report, which said the attackers started it all by yelling that the “Bears suck.’’

"I think they had to be Bears fans," he said of the men who attacked them, though they weren't wearing any Bears jerseys.

The man said he didn’t even realize he was injured until he felt soreness and told paramedics, who found he’d been cut. "My back didn’t feel good and it was all red," he said.

The man said he and his friend from high school "were just both in shock," but also found it funny.

"We were texting each other back and forth even at the hospital,’’ he said. “We weren’t really that bad, I was laughing the whole time I was in the ambulance and in the hospital."

The attackers fled in a red or maroon car, possibly a Mitsubishi Mirage or Mazda Protege, police said. They added that everyone involved appeared to have been drinking.